Optimising websites for tablets and phones

Technology industry research suggests that since the middle of 2014 more website pages have been accessed on tablets and smartphones than on desktops and laptops. In early 2015, Google changed its ranking rules demoting all websites that were not 'mobile friendly'.

What does 'mobile friendly' mean?

Mobile friendly or 'responsive' means that your website re-sizes and re-shapes dynamically to give the optimal display user experience for the size and shape of device being used to access the site. All websites will display on a small device such as a 'phone but unless the site is responsive the user will have to zoom in and slide content around in order to view it.

A responsive site will, essentially, move the same page content into a narrower, column format rather than the traditionally shaped rectangle of a computer monitor. In responsive sites, it is the same content as on the desktop site, just displayed differently. Sometimes font or headlines are enlarged all in the interests of making the site more user-friendly.

We offer services either to re-design your site in a new, responsive format or, where possible (and it not always is possible) re-work your existing site to move blocks of content around and create that user-friendliness.

Re-work or re-build?

Whether or not your site ca be re-worked depends on basically: 1) what tools were used to create it; 2) how simple or modular layout are; 3) whether all of the page have the same format. For site written in commercial or propriatory packages such as WordPress or Joomla we usually can't help. Also for very complex page layouts (multiple columns, lots of different size objects, uneven formats etc) again we probably can't re-work. Where many of the pages are different, re-working is not easy but if only the front page is different from internal pages, that could be OK. If we are unable to re-work your site, you want to consider a re-design.

Re-working can be relatively straight forward and you can have a site that more visitors can easily access and can more readily access your content in a fairly short time frame. Costs will vary depending on the complexity of your orginal site, but not the size. A 200 page site with all pages in the same format would cost the same as a 5 page site.

We would be more than happy to give your site an initial appraisal to see how large a job it would be to make it mobile friendly. Just get in touch via the contact pageand tell us your website address. As soon as we can we'll tell you whether we can help and what the likely cost will be.